Sep 23, 2014

Canon just announced that a bunch of its products were selected by IMAX Corporation and given the mission to shoot 4K footage in space that’s going to be used for IMAX’s upcoming 3D film.

For the job the production team chose the Canon EOS C500 EF digital cinema camera, Canon EOS 1D-C digital SLR cameras and a selection of Canon Cinema Zoom and Prime lenses. The photographic equipment left Earth last week on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and should arrive at the International Space Station where astronauts will use them to capture 4K imagery for IMAX’s new film title “A Perfect Planet.” The movie will be directed by filmmaker Toni Myers and should offer spectacular imagery from space. The film aims to explore the possibilities that await mankind on and off planet Earth.

The most interesting part is that astronauts will be in charge of shooting most of the action, so there won’t be any professional film crew behind the end result. Which makes this project even cooler. Famous large format cinematographer James Neihouse is the film’s director of photography and he was in charge of training the astronauts who will be handling the cameras. The film should make a debut in early 2016.